


A Lone Immortal is a Dead Immortal

by BloodFromTheThorn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt Booker, Hurt/Comfort, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25787113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodFromTheThorn/pseuds/BloodFromTheThorn
Summary: It was somewhat ironic that Booker had learned just how much the team meant to him right in time for it to get him killed. Repeatedly.Still, it wasn't like he was about to just tell Quynh where Andy was, now was he?
Comments: 24
Kudos: 516





	A Lone Immortal is a Dead Immortal

**Author's Note:**

> So it was my birthday yesterday and I decided I could have a little Booker angst. As a treat. 
> 
> Full disclaimer, I've never read the comics, this is all based on the Netflix film.

Booker wasn’t entirely sure if he should be relieved or offended that Quynh hadn’t wanted to oversee his, shall we say, _hospitality_ herself. On the one hand, there was only a handful of immortals in the world and he would have thought that granted him sufficient value as to be worthy of her time; on the other, he was certain that a few centuries of continuous drowning and starvation had given her more than enough time and inclination to think up tortures beyond his wild imaginings and he could admit to being somewhat grateful such ferocity hadn’t yet been brought to bear on him. The beatings, burnings, shootings, and stabbings were more than enough to be getting on with, in his oh-so-humble opinion.

Still, it was only a matter of time. It wasn’t like he was about to actually tell her were Andy was, after all.

The utterly stupid thing is that he would have done. If she had approached him rationally, told some reasonable lie about her coffin rusting away until she could break free and made him believe she only wanted to reunite with Andy because they were still the shield-sisters the others had always been banging on about when they got drunk and nostalgic, he would have gladly pointed her in the right direction. Or, he would have tried at least – it wasn’t as though he actually knew where she was holed up these days and trying to find out would have been a _horrendously_ bad idea. But the point is that he would have tried to help her in any way he could. If only she had bothered pretending.

Instead, she had come at him like the crazed wildcat the ocean had turned her into, and he had known in a single heartbeat of seeing her that the only thing she wanted in the world was for Andy – and anyone standing beside her – to suffer. Booker was never going to let that happen. He might have learned his lesson far, _far_ too late for it to matter, but he had learned all the same.

The irony that he’d only learned that lesson just in time for it to get him killed – many times over – was not lost on him.

“All you have to do is tell me where she is,” the man said again, waving his bloodied knife in the air like he was a fucking Bond villain on a power trip. “Then all of this can stop.”

Still in the process of regrowing a sizeable portion of his left lung, Booker could do nothing more than spit blood at him. Even that tiny action managed to hurt all over.

“That’s a no then? Pity.” The knife swung down and buried itself in the meat of his thigh. He didn’t even have the energy to scream, anymore. “I must say, I thought you’d have given up by now. No girl can be this important.”

“Fuck you,” he managed, the words near silent as his ribs constricted.

The knife tugged downwards, carving a deep wound towards his knee. Thick, dark blood welled out and dripped into the growing puddle of viscera surrounding his chair. “That’s not very nice,” his tormentor said lightly.

“What did Quynh offer you? Money? I’m certain I can double her price.”

He laughed, jolting the knife as he did so. “Even if I thought that were true, you think I’d double-cross her? That bitch is crazy as all hell; she’d keep my head in a drawer.”

Booker’s lung finally finished patching itself around the two ribs impaling it, pushing them back into place with a sharp crack and restoring his ability to draw an unimpeded breath. “You’ve seen what I can do,” he pointed out, unnecessarily going by the way the man was eyeing his ribcage with morbid fascination. “You really think _I’m_ the one you should be pissing off?”

For half a second, he almost thought he had him. The man’s eyes had gone sharp and narrow, calculating in a way that suggested he was trying to size Booker up, but ultimately, it was for naught. “I don’t need to worry about that,” he said with certainty. “You’re not leaving here alive.”

That drew an honest laugh out of Booker for the first time in days, mirth bubbling up around the black hate and fear that rumbled through his core. “I’d love to know how you plan on getting me out of here dead.”

The knife, when it came, was no surprise.

* * *

He came awake again gasping, coughing up the thick, clotted blood coating the inside of his throat from where the blade had torn it open. His shirt had already been a lost cause but it was positively sodden with blood now – if anyone were to see him they would know him for the undead monster that he truly was.

A quick glance around revealed that he was alone for once; Quynh had seen fit to install three different men to oversee his torture, and they typically took turns to make sure he was never given a moment’s respite. Fortunately for him, even between the three of them there were occasionally moments when he was left to his own devices, the one chance he ever had to pull himself back together again after days of nothing but blood and pain and death. He had no idea how long he’d been there – time was hard to keep track of when you were repeatedly having to drag yourself back out of whatever lay beyond the mortal coil – but the whole situation had long since overstayed its welcome.

He'd been tortured before, had endured more pain that most humans would be able to conceive of, but this time it was different. For the first time since he had startled awake from that very first death, he knew that there would be no one knocking down that door to save him. No daring rescue to drag him out of this hell and wrap him up in the warmth of family until he could breathe on his own again.

For the first time in two hundred years, he was truly on his own.

It was only fair, he supposed. After everything he had done, everything his actions had led to, it wasn’t like he deserved anything better than this, a cold chair and handcuffs, consigned to torment without end. He thought of Jean-Pierre’s face twisted up in rage as he cursed his name, thought of the agonised betrayal in Andy’s eyes when she’d finally realised the truth, thought of the hatred in the words Joe spat at him from where he was bound and bloody, and finally, quietly understood. Being cast out alone might have been his punishment, but this, _this_ was what he was due. Nearly two hundred years of failing everyone he had ever loved and now he was finally paying the price he deserved.

And it would be a heavy price. It had occurred to him early on in this little personal hell of his that there really was no escaping his fate. While he was fairly sure the others would come and rescue him if they knew he was in trouble, banishment notwithstanding, they weren’t going to even think of looking to see if he was okay for another century, and who else did he have? At least regular humans facing torture could look forward to the sweet relief of death when it eventually came.

Perhaps that was Quynh’s plan after all. Make him suffer as she had suffered until he would willingly help her track down Andy. That thought left him trembling in terror until he forcibly reminded himself that even if Quynh did succeed in driving him to madness, even if he did turn on his friends as she had, Andy would already be long dead. Without her immortality she could only have another few decades left, whether she managed to keep dodging bullets until the end or not. She’d never have to see him like that.

It wasn’t a comfort, trying to think of a world without Andy in it, but he had nothing left in the world to him that _was_ a comfort, so he’d take what he could get. It was better than imagining a future where he raised a gun against her a second time.

* * *

As per usual, he wasn’t given long to recover himself. His best guess was a few hours, time he spent mostly trying to catch some sleep and being distantly grateful that at least all of his injuries had healed up and stopped giving him shit every time he tried to so much as breathe. Immortality was much more of a curse than a gift, in his opinion, but it did occasionally have its perks.

“Are you ready to talk now?”

It was a different man this time – Booker thought he’d heard Quynh refer to him as Deckard and it was as good a name as any to work with – but it didn’t make much difference. All three of them were pretty creative when it came to causing pain and while variety might be the spice of life, Booker wasn’t entirely sure the same could be said about death.

“ _Casse-toi_ ,” he spat. That earned him a box around the ears, followed swiftly by a sharp blow to his stomach, but it was surface level pain and healed in seconds.

“Now, now, none of that. If you don’t want to tell me where Andromache is, then we’ll just have to pick up where we left off, won’t we?” He looked around himself, as though searching for inspiration. “What were we working on? Was it the electricity?”

Booker’s eyes flicked to the abandoned generator sitting in the corner and he mentally sighed to himself. It wasn’t the worst option, exactly, but he’d rather have taken the knife – at least a physical wound healed up quickly and stopped hurting. Being jolted with whatever voltage these idiots could get out of the ancient genny might not do too much damage, but it still hurt like a bitch and left his muscles twitching violently long after the current had stopped.

“Your memory’s shit,” he said, just to be contrary, “You were seeing how many fingernails you could pull off before I screamed.”

Deckard lit up in positive delight at the memory. “Ah yes! That was a fun game, don’t you think? You did admirably.”

He had, in point of fact. Not that it had made any difference, of course, but these days not giving his captors the satisfaction of hearing him scream in agony was about as good as it got. For a single, fragile second, he allowed himself to mourn at the bleakness of the future spread out before him, then shook it off fiercely. He’d been the one to drive the others away; it was his own fault he was stuck here.

“Ah, but we’ve already done your fingernails and I hate to repeat myself. Let me see. What happens to you when you lose a limb?”

Booker’s heart went cold as he tried his level best not to react. “It hurts.”

Deckard chuckled darkly. “Does it grow back?”

It did – Quynh had been the one to discover that way back when after her hand was chopped off by a warlord seeking to cripple her archery abilities, and Andy had later confirmed it losing a couple of fingers and part of her foot to frostbite while stuck somewhere in Siberia. Booker distantly remembered losing his ear that very first time he died – a stray bullet, he thought it might have been – but it had been whole and healthy when he’d resurrected. He wasn’t eager to test that theory again though.

Deckard was watching him closely, apparently taking his silence as its own answer. “So it does. Interesting. What happens if I cut off your head?”

“Try it and see,” he snapped, letting anger cloud over any fear. He was almost certain it wouldn’t actually put an end to him – Nicky had had half his head blown off just a few months ago after all and he’d been up and fine within a few minutes – and at least it would be a quick death.

“Hmm, probably best not to risk it. We need you alive to tell us where Andy is after all. Let’s start small, instead: a few fingers should do nicely. What do you think?”

Booker spat on his boots and let his body fall still, swallowing down the voice he would need to scream. Deckard, grinning like the cat that ate the canary, drew his knife and started pulling apart the fist Booker had desperately formed.

It takes hours before Deckard’s satisfied he’s done all he can for the day and pulls out his gun. When the bullet comes it’s a fucking mercy.

* * *

Booker woke to the sound of someone calling his name, quiet and fierce and so far away it might as well have been a mile for all he thought he could respond to it. He was healed, more or less, but he could still feel the pain threatening to fracture its way through his skull if he dared to so much as twitch and in truth, he wasn’t really feeling up to returning to the waking world. He’d never been able to stay dead for very long, but surely he could at least pretend for another few minutes.

“ _Booker_ ,” the voice hissed again, angrier this time. Distantly, he felt hands on his cheeks. “ _C’mon_ Book, you’re not doing this to me.”

That was strange – none of his guards had ever called him Book. The only ones who ever had- well. They weren’t coming to the rescue any time soon.

“Booker? Are you still with me? _Sebastian?_ ” The hands on his face dug their nails in sharply, but it was the sound of his name that brought him round with a jolt, leaving him gasping as the pain ignited. He was so blinded by it for a long second that he barely recognised the face half an inch from his own.

 _“Andy,”_ he breathed as soon as his brain caught up to what he was seeing, then was immediately blindsided by all the implications her being here had. _“Andy,_ ” he said again, fiercer as consciousness flooded in to fill the gaps death had left behind. “You can’t be here!”

“Of course I’m here,” she told him, her hands still cradling his face as though she was just as surprised as he was to find herself there. “Someone needed to save your ass.”

“No, I mean- Quynh. She’s alive. She’s back- Andy, she wants to _kill_ you!” There was far too much to explain and nowhere near enough time to do it. He hadn’t seen Quynh once since she’d ditched him with his torturers and for all he knew, she’d been lying in wait to see if the others were coming to bail him out. That he’d been so certain they wouldn’t and yet apparently Andy was still here- It was too much for him to try to process in that white hot moment. “You need to get out of here,” he tried again, when she did nothing more than drop her hands to the cuffs keeping him down. He did his best to wrench away from her. “Aren’t you listening to me? You need to _go_.”

“I’m not leaving you Book,” she replied simply, fiddling with the lock on his left wrist, “No man left behind.”

As if that still applied. As if he hadn’t thrown away any right to that assurance when he’d turned traitor and stabbed them all in the back. As if he were any man at all still worth saving.

“Andromache _, please._ ”

The lock clicked free, and she reached for this other wrist. He snatched her hand in his and squeezed it, desperately willing her to listen, to _understand_. “Andy. She will kill you as soon as she knows you’re here. I’m not worth that. You have to get out.”

She paused, and for a stupid, heart-stopping moment, he thought he might actually have got through to her as she gripped his hand right back. “I’d never leave you here Booker,” she said quietly, meeting his eyes to show him the truth shining there. “You are worth far more than my life.” When he tried to protest, she spoke over him. “I know about Quynh – the others are handling that. We’re getting you out of here.”

Her eyes flickered to the door; he followed her gaze, distracted, and finally noticed Nile silhouetted against the light shining in from the corridor, a rifle in her hands as she kept watch. The fight went out of him in a rush – he was exhausted and hurting and he wanted nothing more than to lay his head down to rest somewhere safe and even though he knew he needed to, he couldn’t turn his family away. At least with Nile there, Andy wasn’t completely unprotected.

His other hand came free with a metallic rasp, his feet following a few moments later, and Andy popped back to standing as though she didn’t feel the weight of two thousand years on her shoulders. Booker let her haul him to his feet helplessly, groaning when his knees protested the sudden movement after so long sitting still. A handgun was pressed to his palm a moment later. 

“Stay with me Book,” Andy ordered. If there was anything he still knew how to do, it was follow Andy’s orders. 

The corridor outside was empty aside from two sets of bloody footprints leading to his door that he chose to carefully ignore, and a watchful Nile. She greeted him with open relief and a broad smile that warmed him to his toes. “It’s good to see you Booker. We’ve been worried sick.”

She was a pretty good liar for someone her age, particularly considering how good at reading people he usually was – the only reason he knew not to trust her was his own certainty that the others had been doing just fine without him. Nicky would probably have been worried when he heard Booker was in trouble because he was compassionate like that, but Joe had a protective streak a mile wide and Booker was responsible for delivering the man he loved to the hands of those who would torture him. If Andy and Nile’s rescue was unlikely, Joe’s concern was an impossibility. 

“How did you even find me?” He asked instead of contradicting her. 

“Not here,” Andy hissed, checking her clip before striding back down the corridor the way she’d come. She appeared to be making very little effort to be quiet, so Booker raised his eyebrows at Nile as they followed in her wake. 

“Quynh found us,” she admitted quietly, keeping her eyes on the deserted path ahead. “Sort of, anyway. Copley realised she was following our trail and tipped us off – when he tried to reach out to you to give the same warning, he couldn’t find you.”

There was a lot there to process; it took him a moment to decide which part it was safe to ask about. “You’re working with Copley?” 

“He’s been covering our tracks, finding us new work, that kind of thing. He feels bad about the whole- you know. Merrick situation.”

Well, that made two of them. Booker nodded carefully at her in response and fell silent, mulling that over with as blank an expression as he could manage when it felt like he was hanging onto his own sanity by his fingernails. So, in the absence of his technological capabilities, they’d brought in Copley – it made a certain amount of sense, and Booker knew that the man would be able to do just as good a job as he ever had. That didn’t mean it wasn’t agonising to realise they’d been able to replace him so easily. 

Scarcely seven months into exile when he could still barely breathe for missing them all so badly, and they’d already found someone willing and able to take his place. 

It was no less than he deserved, he reminded himself sharply as he shook himself back into focus, and now was no time to worry about it. Andy had cleared the door at the end of the corridor, and just beyond it he could see the bloodied slump of one of the men who’d been having their fun with him. He’d never caught what this one was called and in that moment, he was glad of it. Let the fucker rot with no one to even remember his name. 

They took a sharp left, then a right, darting across doorways but coming across no one else besides another cold corpse – Deckard. Booker took the time to kick him sharply as he walked by, idly flexing the fingers he’d had to regrow as a result of his treatment. The only thing that kept him from spitting on the man’s corpse was the wary look both Andy and Nile shot him at his drawn out curse, as though they were waiting for him to do something stupid. 

Vengeance wasn’t the priority now, he knew that. They all needed to get out of there safely – something that felt far less certain when Andy was calmly walking around like she was still immortal – and Booker couldn’t worry about piecing himself together until after that was done. He still had 99 years of exile left to go after all; it wasn’t like he wouldn’t have time. 

“Main exit up ahead,” Andy announced softly, breaking him through his bleak thoughts. “Booker, was there anyone else here?”

“A third man, and Quynh. I don’t know where either of them are.”

“If our plan is working, she’s on the other side of the city. We didn’t see anyone else here.” She glanced back towards him with the beginnings of a frown forming on her face in the same moment as Booker caught a glimpse of something dark and metallic peeking around the lip of the doorway ahead of them. 

He didn’t hesitate for a second. He dove for Andy with a yell still trapped in his throat, letting his own gun clatter to the floor in his haste to put himself between her and the danger. He snatched her slighter form into his shadow just as there was a volley of distant _pops_ and something hard and painful slammed into his back, knocking him off his feet. 

He was dead before he hit the ground.

* * *

He woke again several minutes later, laid out on the backseat of an unfamiliar car, but death and exhaustion were black ropes around his mind and he sank back into oblivion before anyone had even noticed he’d opened his eyes.

* * *

When Booker blinked awake for the second time, it was to the reassuring sight of one of the bedrooms in an old safehouse, one on the edge of the city he hadn’t visited in nearly 50 years. He had generally tried to avoid France where he could and the others had let him – he didn’t like to consider what it said about him that the first place he’d gone when the team had exiled him was Paris.

He could hear Andy shouting in the background, followed by a fierce rebuttal from Nile of all people, but he knew from their tone of voice that none of them were in any immediate danger. He still considered rushing to see what the problem was, but his body was heavy with the weight of all the healing it had had to do in the last month and honestly, he would really rather just let them duke it out while he focused on getting upright again. A few moments later the shouting cut off and several doors slammed in rapid succession, plunging the entire house into eerie silence.

Booker sighed – he hadn’t been able to hear exactly what it was they were shouting about but he had a sneaking suspicion it was something to do with him. All the more reason he needed to high tail it out of there now he was conscious. He hadn’t planned on coming back with the others at all, hoping instead to be able to peel off once they were out of the building so he wouldn’t have to face Nicky and Joe again before he returned to his lonely existence at the bottom of a wine bottle, but what was done was done and there was no point bitching about it.

Carefully, with the patience of someone who had spent two hundred years picking themselves up off the floor, he levered his way out of bed. Someone had seen fit to strip him of his blood-soaked clothes and clean up the worst of the gore painting him – an incredibly kind gesture he was grateful for – before redressing him in a pair of pyjama pants that were almost certainly Nicky’s. A quick cast about the room uncovered a clean t-shirt and some jeans in his size, both still with their shop tags attached.

It seemed like he had a lot that he needed to thank the team for.

Fully dressed and feeling a lot more human than he had done that morning, he forced himself to take a deep breath and headed for the door. The house was still oddly silent around him, but as he padded towards the stairs, the soft sound of a radio playing from the kitchen started to drift up to him and lure him down. It would be exceptionally easy to slip through the hall and leave now without ever showing his face to whoever was chopping vegetables – going off the rhythmic thudding sounds he could hear – but after they’d gone to the trouble of rescuing him, that would hardly be fair. He might be a coward, but he owed them all better than that.

The thought gave him the courage to push forwards into the kitchen, only for it to immediately flee when he saw Joe waiting for him with none of the others in sight. Unruffled, the man didn’t even look up from the carrots he was methodically dismantling.

“About time you woke up.”

His voice gave away no emotion – no anger, no relief, no _nothing_. In Booker’s experience, that usually meant the man was still trying to get a handle on how he felt and he didn’t want to clue the others in until he was sure of himself. It didn’t exactly bode well.

“Guess I needed the rest,” he replied very softly, feeling wholly out of place and entirely unwelcome. He should have just headed for the front door. Better yet, should have made it out of the compound alive so he never needed to come to this safe house at all.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause in which Joe continued chopping vegetables and Booker hovered uncertainly, wanting to run and to approach in equal measure. Apparently sensing his indecision, Joe glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “You look like shit.”

Booker had known full well he had looked like death warmed over prior to Quynh’s appearance, and he sincerely doubted a month of torture had done him any favours in that department. “Thanks.”

Joe snorted. “All healed though?”

“Never better.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” That had a little more emotion in it than the rest of him, but Booker didn’t have a clue what it might be. When he didn’t respond, Joe returned to his chopping. “I guess you heard the others arguing before?”

“Just raised voices,” he edged cautiously. “I didn’t want to eavesdrop.”

“If they didn’t want you to overhear they should have been quieter about it. Andy wants to get in contact with Quynh, try and get her to sit down and talk things out. Nile… isn’t convinced.”

Having spent a month experiencing the sharp edges of Quynh’s shattered psyche, it was fair to say that Booker was a long way from convinced either, but he was also pretty sure he no longer got a vote in such matters. “Sounds like Nile’s settling in well if she’s willing to take on Andy like that.”

“Oh, she’s a fighter for sure. She adores Andy, but she’s no pushover.” Booker didn’t doubt it. “Nicky went after her when she left to make sure she kept herself out of trouble. Andy said she was going for a walk to calm down.”

There was no need to ask why Joe hadn’t gone with her to make sure _she_ stayed out of trouble. If Andy was looking for trouble then God himself wouldn’t keep her from it and at times, it was better for everyone to just get out of her way. Once upon a time, Booker would have been the one staying up late to make sure she got back home safe.

“Nicky and I aren’t taking sides at the moment,” Joe continued quietly, pained, when it was clear that Booker wasn’t going to press despite obviously wanting to. “We were both devastated to lose Quynh, and to see her back is- It’s a lot. It’s more than we had ever hoped for. But we also know what Nile’s been seeing in her dreams. Heard what she did to you.” That was accompanied by a darting look at Booker’s face that he wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret. “I’m not so sure that Quynh is really back at all. And if that’s the case, I don’t want to put Andy anywhere near her.”

It would have been an opening for Booker to share his own thoughts, but in the end Joe hadn’t asked and this was already far more than the terms of his exile should have allowed for. He nodded silently instead, casting his eyes about the room as though searching for something to say until they landed on the one thing out of place.

His go bag was sitting innocently on one of the chairs half pulled out from the battered table, the handle of a familiar handgun poking out the top. It was the same go bag he had last seen tucked carefully beside the bedroom window in his shitty little apartment, the bag that had definitely never made it to the compound Quynh had dragged him to. Which, of course, meant that someone had been to his flat.

It was one thing for him to live like he was barely clinging onto life, but it was another to know that the team had seen him like that. The unwashed laundry, the unemptied recycling overflowing with cheap whiskey bottles, and the fridge containing nothing but one or two bottom-of-the-shelf ready meals hardly painted the picture of a man trying to be his best self, and he just knew that if things were different he would already have been being berated for his desperately shit life choices. If it had been any other situation, he would have been embarrassed; as it was, he doubted he could sink any lower in Joe’s estimation no matter what he did.

Somehow feeling worse than he had when he’d woken up in a fucking torture basement that morning, he pulled the bag towards him and poked through it. So far as he could tell it was untouched – everything he needed to get the hell out of dodge right that instant was neatly packaged up ready for him. Giving himself no time to think about it, he swung the bag up over his shoulder and straightened. Joe’s head jerked up to watch him.

“Thank you,” Booker told him with fervent sincerity, “for getting me out of there. It was a hell of a save.”

“Of course,” Joe said, sounding confused more than anything. “Sorry it took so long.”

He shook his head at the apology. It wasn’t necessary. “You’ll pass on my thanks to the others?”

Joe was staring hard at him, his expression fracturing into blank confusion for just a second before he wiped it away and frowned. Not expecting a response, Booker turned for the door.

“Book, _what_ - _”_ A tight grip on his arm stopped Booker in his tracks, tugging him back firmly to face Joe’s rapidly crumbling façade of calm. “Where are you going?” He looked genuinely alarmed at the idea he might be leaving.

None of this made _sense_ , Booker bemoaned silently. He was supposed to pick up the bag and leave quietly to let them get back to their lives in peace, without him hanging around like some unwanted ghoulish spectre. He was fully healed, and what his immortality hadn’t patched up, the long sleep had at least managed to soothe for the time being. He’d dug this hole when he betrayed them; now it was time to bury himself in it.

Joe glanced at the bag, back at Booker’s tight expression, and visibly tried to will himself to understand. “You’re leaving?”

“Nothing’s changed Joe. I remember the deal. I’ve still got 99 years.”

Joe looked shuttered for a heartbeat, then his other hand came up to grip at Booker’s free arm and pin him in place. “Book, _everything’s_ changed.”

“Quynh being back doesn’t change what I did.”

“No,” Joe agreed immediately, “It doesn’t. But it does change where we are _now_.”

Booker still evidently looked completely unconvinced, because Joe tugged him down to sit in one of the chairs at the table, pulling his bag away from him in the same move and setting it out of reach. Once he was sure that Booker wasn’t planning on darting for freedom as soon as he let go, Joe settled himself across from him.

“Booker, you’ve just been through hell. Nile and Andy told us what they saw down there and it sounds-” He cut himself off, worrying at his lip with his teeth. “That happened because you were out there alone. Because we weren’t there to watch your back, to know you were in trouble.”

“Joe I swear to god if you start trying to tell me that this is somehow your fault-”

“I’m not. Mostly, anyway. This was Quynh’s doing and we’re all still trying to work through _that_ nightmare, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Booker- We’ve missed you. When we sent you away… I was pissed. So was Nicky. The things Merrick had done to us are not easily forgotten, and we haven’t, but the decisions we made then were done in anger. Betrayal.”

“Yeah, because I betrayed you.” There was a clock in the back of Booker’s head that was slowly ticking down until the rest of the team appeared. It was one thing to have to face Joe and then leave again; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it with any kind of dignity if he had to say goodbye to all of them for the second time.

Joe’s answer, when it came, was careful. “You did. But, I think, you understand what you did wrong now, don’t you?”

 _‘Trusted Copley. Trusted Merrick_ ,’ he immediately wanted to say, but he stopped himself. He hadn’t trusted Merrick because he had never met the man – that had all been something Copley worked out – and as for trusting Copley, the team were doing that now too. His trust hadn’t really been the issue. “I didn’t come to you guys when I was struggling,” he said instead, feeling the truth of it down to his bones. In the end, he should have put his faith in his family.

Joe’s smile was warm and bright and hopeful. “I don’t think you’re going to make that mistake again.”

“ _Never_.”

“Well then. All we can do now is work past it. You leaving now is only going to mean putting you in danger again and there’s no way any of us are going to let that happen. Not after this.”

Booker so badly wanted to trust in what he was hearing, to believe, but he had to be certain. “Are you sure the others-”

“Nile has given us shit about this whole thing every day you’ve been gone,” Joe announced smartly. “Nicky started casually bringing up fables about forgiveness two months ago. And I’m pretty sure that Andy was keeping tabs on you before you disappeared off the grid – she went a bit nuts when Copley couldn’t find hide nor hair of you. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been on board with you coming back pretty much since you left.”

Something warm lit up in the pit of Booker’s stomach, but there was something he needed to say first. “Yusuf, I _am_ sorry. For everything that happened.”

“I know you are.” He was smiling again, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders now he saw that Booker wasn’t going anywhere. “But between you and me, you’d do better being sorry about the state of the fridge in your flat – Nicky’s going to be force feeding you vegetables for a year.”

Booker snorted, feeling something inside himself finally, _finally_ settle back into place. “I’m pretty sure immortals don’t need to worry about things like getting five a day.”

“You can be the one to tell him that. In the meantime, sit there, and help me with the potatoes.”


End file.
